AxeII + DAW levels during recording

Well, as I got it, there's no way to do what I described yet.
Maybe the new firmare will solve it someday, just to make Axe more "usb-interface-like".

Recording at low levels has some issues. For example, you have recorded the guitar and when mixing you want to make it louder. When you record anything at maximum levels, you have just to lower its level, but in this case you'll have to amplify the track you've recorded.
It's like setting the input level on Axe low and adding gain in the effects grid to compensate it.
 
Most Axe 2 as a sound card issues I've come across are simply user error and not an Axe issue. This is a great example. Lets run a DI signal and take a look...it's seriously non-existent. Try the input on the 11 Rack if you want to see the worst case example of this.
 
So you're trying to adjust your mix levels for monitoring while recording so that you get good deflection of your guitar track, but want to be able to hear the rest of the mix more without adjusting all of your other levels as you go along?

I'm not familiar with Logic, but if this was me I'd think about trying to create a bus (possibly two) just for adjusting the mix for monitoring purposes. Basically you'd create a bus that would be fed by all of the other tracks and then you could adjust the overall volume just during recording OR you could send just the guitar track to this bus to adjust monitoring levels OR you could have two busses, one for guitar and one for all of the other tracks and adjust both for monitoring. I'd imagine that the bus would have to go to the master output and each track would be sent to the necessary bus or busses.

Not sure if it's practical because of possible latency issues, but as long as there aren't any effects or anything on either bus it should be pretty low.

It may not be called a bus in Logic, it may be called something like a send or something; I'm tired.
 
Any way you slice it our beloved Axe II's are in serious need USB level control. We need send and return USB level adjustment. I propose we have a USB send control for independent recording level setting and in parallel with that another level control to set your direct monitoring level. On top of that we need a USB return level so we can use our Axe II as a sound card for our computer and jam with backing tracks and set our track level to taste.

I don't know about PC's, but on my Mac's the level slider is greyed out when the Axe II is selected as the sound card. I hope all this makes sense. I trust it does. I'm not complaining I'm just trying to help advance this amazing piece of gear to the next level of power and flexibility.


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Well now we're getting into some of the issues I have in general with digital audio. AFAIK the USB audio is 48kHz, 24-bit digital and more often than not it's going to be a fixed output level on any piece of gear. Its just like how you can't adjust the level of the SPDIF output....it's a fixed value. That's part of what makes digital great, it's just a stream of numbers and you get no degradation when sending it as long as its clean and stable.

Once you start messing with the levels you start changing the actual values of the data, not just the monitoring of the levels of it.

I'm tired, I hope I'm making some kind of sense.

Either way I don't think that it's a bug....it's how digital audio is supposed to work.
 
Think of it like a fader in your DAW. Can't we just have a level control? I'm no design engineer, but I can't imagine a USB level control not being possible.


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I'll butt out.

I can tell by the other thread that you don't want to hear from me anymore. I understand where you're coming from because I have had similar questions about things exactly like this myself and to be honest I feel pretty comfortable where I'm at knowledge wise (though still trying to learn everyday), but I'm not a design engineer either and I'll leave it to the experts to clarify things. I can't figure out how to explain why it makes sense to me right now and I'm also exhausted and it seems like you don't want to try to decipher what I'm doing a pretty lousy attempt to explain. ;)
 
Please don't take my comments like I'm arguing with you. I value your opinion and your insight. I'm really just trying get my idea across and hopefully get an extremely useful feature added.


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I'm not taking it that way at all. I teach for a living right now and I'm in the unfortunate position of having to cover for someone else who had to have emergency surgery so I'm teaching stuff that I haven't seen at this level in years. I like to consider one my best traits as knowing when I'm not getting through to someone and that's only second to realizing when I'm out of my league on a subject and am about to start spewing borderline conjecture and misinformation. Its not really misinformation as much as it is my way of understanding something which may have missing parts or specific terminologies where its needed and I know that if I'm up there talkiing as if I am an authority on something it only takes one misstep to lose all credibility and when that happens everything you say is doubted or questioned.

I have a pretty good feel for the threshold and I'm right up against it. Of course I've been experiencing that feeling a lot the last month. Having two days notice to try to brush up on this stuff at work is unrealistic.

I'm also not familiar enough with Macs to be an authority. I know that inside of Windows I can see both playback and record levels inside of Window's built in mixer and I can adjust them both. I haven't had a chance to try them out though.
 
Recently noticed the unpleasant result of recording the guitar during the playback.
If DAW level and guitar preset are quite high, they start to overload and the clipping occurs, and the recorded track has some clicks, noise and other artefacts. That makes me to decrease the master output in the host and recuce the preset volume.
 
shotgunn said:
I think it is essential for FAS to add some sort of USB level control and a 'direct monitor level control'. I hope I explained myself properly. Can we all agree that the Axe II needs better level control for recording? I know I agree with me.


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I think a simple usb mix parameter would do. A input/output mix knob. So when set to 100 percent input we hear the axe fx. When set to 100 percent output we hear itunes and logic or anything else on the computer and existance of any axe fx sound would be dependant on the state of the daw ie. track input set to axe fx ch 1 +2rmed
 
shotgunn said:
I think it is essential for FAS to add some sort of USB level control and a 'direct monitor level control'. I hope I explained myself properly. Can we all agree that the Axe II needs better level control for recording? I know I agree with me.


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Click to expand...

I think a simple usb mix parameter would do. A input/output mix knob. So when set to 100 percent input we hear the axe fx. When set to 100 percent output we hear itunes and logic or anything else on the computer and existance of any axe fx sound would be dependant on the state of the daw ie. track input set to axe fx ch 1 +2 armed, that way you could set the guitar level as you want from within the daw. JUST LIKE A REAL AUDIO INTERFACE.
 
Thomas Larsson said:
I really don´t think most people understood the question.
No matter what theories some folks have , you should be able to choose your desired recording level to get most resolution.
Wich means slightly lower than clip.
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Respectfully disagree, unless I'm reading your post incorrectly. Slightly lower than clipping would leave you next to no headroom, and be a bitch to mix in the end.
 
Pooh said:
Recently noticed the unpleasant result of recording the guitar during the playback.
If DAW level and guitar preset are quite high, they start to overload and the clipping occurs, and the recorded track has some clicks, noise and other artefacts. That makes me to decrease the master output in the host and recuce the preset volume.
Click to expand...

I have my axe set up "shotgun method" for monitoring with the daw and I am hearing a lot of these clics and pops and drops. It is audible in the playback also. This has really been driving me crazy cause the pops and extra sounds are very annoying.When you get a new system and start learning how to use it you don't know if it is user error or really the unit itself. I got the axe fx II with the intention of using in this exact config. So now what ? If I had known this was an issue I would not have purchased it. Unfortunately you have to be well on your way to learning and using the unit to discover the problem. I researched the axe fx for weeks and found no indication that the usb/interface/monitoring didn't work like I have come to expect it to work. I mean c,mon Line 6 hd 500 can do this and the axe fx can't. Very disappointed I'm still having trouble actually believing this is happening. I am also disappointed in the delay's for me personally I want my delay repeats to sound exactly like the chord or note i hit prior to the delay.Not so with this unit , I have tried all the delays and all different settings the repeats sound like their in a box. I noticed this same crap when roland came out with their cosm. My workaround for that was use the daw delays. Doing that instantly cleaned up the boxed sound I was hearing no fuss no muss just clean delay but back again to the clips and pops artifacts. This unit is close to being great so close but i think that is actually making me more angry that it is this close but I can't use it for what and how I bought it for. The delay thing isn't really that big of a deal because I do have the daw effects. But I don't understand why the axe doesn't have the clean delay that the daw has.
 
NMG said:
I made a half assed video found on my youtube channel tacking this problem. Chech signiture
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watched video.laughed out loud when at your expression when you mentioned the instructions were not in the manual. Thanks for posting the vid. I am getting ted support tomorrow to work through issue's hopefully
 
I've read the discussion and yes it would be nice to have this feature. I agree that without excellent drivers there are bound to be issues with latency, crashes, etc while people do all sorts of complicated things. My USB problem: the Axe's USB inputs won't play nice with my Echo Layla 24 (PCI card) on Win7 Ultimate x64.

I get around it by setting my DAW project to 24/48 and then recording the SPDIF input on the Layla. I also reamp in this way at line level, sending a dry track to the Axe and back digitally.

I record my dry tracks in parallel using a Layla analog input, fed with a LittleLabs STD into a MOTU Z-box for the dry track. One of the STD outs goes to the Axe and the other goes to the Layla.

Doing this way lets me the ASIO mixer in my usual soundcard to resolve AXE master level issues. Right now this is the best approach for me because the FAS driver isn't a fit in my system.
 
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Hoping someone is still in the same boat as me...Been dealing with this issue for awhile now. So...as of fw update 18, I've alleviated the issue of usb audio being too quiet but still see no way of turning off hardware monitoring(so I'm hearing the guitar come through DAW instead of the hardware feed straight through to output 1). Using shotgunn's method moves it to output 2 with the FXL block but is still the hardware feed, not the DAW feed. You're not actually ever hearing the DAW feed of the guitar until playback of a recorded clip, AFAIK. In comparison, if i were to try the same thing with my Scarlett interface, you wouldn't hear any guitar through the speakers until a track is armed for record. Also, it seems, with shotgunn's method when the guitar is routed to output 2, the usb audio(backing tracks) are still running through output 1. I have tried so many different configs to no avail. My goal is to get unprocessed usb backing tracks and DAW 'auditioning' of the guitar both thru Output 1, with no hardware feed of the guitar to any output. Thanks in advance to any help! relevant settings are as follows:

Axe I/O:
Main input source - Analog(to allow backing tracks to flow thru unprocessed)
USB out source - Output 2

Axe-Edit:
axeedit screen.jpg
 
thenerm333 said:
Hoping someone is still in the same boat as me...Been dealing with this issue for awhile now. So...as of fw update 18, I've alleviated the issue of usb audio being too quiet but still see no way of turning off hardware monitoring(so I'm hearing the guitar come through DAW instead of the hardware feed straight through to output 1). Using shotgunn's method moves it to output 2 with the FXL block but is still the hardware feed, not the DAW feed. You're not actually ever hearing the DAW feed of the guitar until playback of a recorded clip, AFAIK. In comparison, if i were to try the same thing with my Scarlett interface, you wouldn't hear any guitar through the speakers until a track is armed for record. Also, it seems, with shotgunn's method when the guitar is routed to output 2, the usb audio(backing tracks) are still running through output 1. I have tried so many different configs to no avail. My goal is to get unprocessed usb backing tracks and DAW 'auditioning' of the guitar both thru Output 1, with no hardware feed of the guitar to any output. Thanks in advance to any help! relevant settings are as follows:

Axe I/O:
Main input source - Analog(to allow backing tracks to flow thru unprocessed)
USB out source - Output 2

Axe-Edit:
View attachment 25561
Click to expand...

Arm you track in your DAW. Your preset looks right on. As long as the volume pedal is at 0. This is what kills the direct internal signal. With your track armed play the guitar and then lab the signal in your DAW. Turn the DAW fader up dan down as well. If either of these change the pan or volume then you are monitoring via your DAW and all is well.
 
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